Friday, July 06, 2007

I'm currently at Oak Park Mall waiting for my friends to arrive. There are a lot of annoying and/or bad things here.

* This place is crawling with emo kids.* Malls are just evil.* The whole mall is a "No Skateboarding, Rollerblading or Bicycling" zone. * Bike theft is probably more prone here than in the secure garage at work.

I have no legal way to remedy the first two problems, so I'll tolerate them for now.

I know the "No Bicycling" thing is meant to keep the "gnarly dudes" at bay, and that I'd probably be able to talk my way out of any trouble with the rent-a-cops here, since this is my primary vehicle.

On with the big problem. Locking up in a somewhat hostile environment.

Tactic:

1) Take the front wheel off and set it next to the rear wheel.2) Thread Ye Big olde ghetto tube-wrapped chain and lock through the main triangle, rear triangle and spokes of both wheels, then around a stationary object such as a natural gas pipe.3) Thread cheapish cable lock through the wheels and frame, and around another stationary object.4) Thread a really cheap thin cable lock through the rear rack, seat rails, and bottle cages.

9 comments:

The pack of cigarettes is a nice touch in the last photo. I don't see what stationary object you have it chained to, though.

The "gas pipe" suggestion gives me an idea for a post to CommuteByBike -- Guerrilla Bicycle Parking for when bike racks aren't available. I'll have to take photos for this one. I usually use handicap parking signs. With U locks, parking meters also work well where available.

You can see the gas pipes sticking out of the ground (really low and weird shaped) in this photo of my war-riding wireless rig. OR, thank goodness for 5+ megapixels in my cheapo camera, I was able to zoom in on the gas pipes in the first photo.

Forgive my rural lived in Maine too long mentality, but what the Hell is an "emo" kid?

From the looks of things, you have as many security concerns addressed as possible. Again, my self inflicted exile to the woods of Maine causes me to be suprised that bike security anywhere has come down to using as many locks as you can carry. When I attended college in Baltimore in the early 70's, my only transportation was my bike. I never locked it. It was never stolen. That was then. This is now.

Maybe I should move my shop to the city. My lock sales would definitely pick up.

Haha... Emo is a genre of music that kind of borrows some elements of punk, but then adds an unhealthy dose of Emotion - Emo. The emotions most commonly expressed are Depression, Angst, and broken-heartedness. In other words, it's usually pretty whiny.

The most zealous followers of this style of music -- are not surprisingly -- whiny, for the most part. They also have a unique sense of fashion that's easy to spot.

Privacy Policy

This site is driven by software that uses third-party cookies from Google (Blogger, AdSense, Feedburner and their associates.) Cookies are small pieces of non-executable data stored by your web browser, often for the purpose of storing preferences or data from previous visits to a site. No individual user is directly tracked by this or any other means, but I do use the aggregate data for statistics purposes.

By leaving a link or e-mail address in my comments (including your blogger profile or website URL), you acknowledge that the published comment and associated links will be available to the public and that they will likely be clicked on.

Sponsors

RSS Feed

Contact me!

If you'd like to contact me outside the comments, leave a message and I'll respond. Oh yeah, if you're going to send me a URL, ask me if you can send me one first, then send it when I reply. If not, my spam troll will eat your fingers for breakfast.